Drinking Under Where?

The secret truth behind drinks and their sexy names is hidden at the bottom of the glass.

O Tom Collins, O Harvey Wallbanger, how you must rue these days of indecency! What good are you now, Sloe Gin Fizz, when so many choose a Slow Comfortable Screw?

This young lady featured at right: You know what she's offering? The drink? It's a “Sex in Your Mouth.” Yes, garden clubbers, a “Sex in Your Mouth.” Now I know I may not be the “hep cat” I used to be, but this, this seems a bit ... suggestive.

This drink is available at Lucky Buddha, incidentally, which has no shortage of scandalously named drinks and peacock colors, all designed to wear down the morally gelatinous. “Sex in Your Mouth?” Well it may be OK as the name of a song by the New York hardcore band Gay for Johnny Depp, but what can it mean that it's appearing here, in a Richmond bar?

I went out into the world looking for a few good drinks. I found a steady parade of come-ons and lewd propositions disguised as blue liqueurs and fizzing energy beverages. What has happened to the days of morally sound drinks? The B-52? The Manhattan? The Old Fashioned? You can't find a Pink Lady anymore, but her Pink Panties are everywhere. Heck, even those salacious drinks of yesteryear are tame by comparison; the Buttery Nipple is beginning to show some droop.

Partly, I think, we're being trained for indecency by some covert guild of mixologists. Suppose my favorite thing in the world is a sweet mixture of Bailey's Irish Cream, Kahlua and whipped cream. I can't ask for that, no. I have to ask for a Blow Job. And then they won't even let me use my damn hands to drink it.

So they're programming us by way of introducing sex into our weekend drink menus. For what sinister purpose? A way of disinhibiting us, no doubt, so we'll be more receptive to gay marriage, gun ownership, women's volleyball. I hesitate to call it a conspiracy, but there's a shift toward the outright perverse. Out of civilization comes greater savagery yet.

See, I could ask all day and never find a drink called “The Afternoon Nap” or “The Lemonade Stand.” I could never come across a “Doing Your Chores Early Without Being Asked” or an “Enjoying the Subtle Charms of a Fine Lady Singing in the Choir Before Asking Her to the Autumn Social, Discussing the Merits of Crop Rotation, Courting Her for Three Years and Finally Marrying Her Down at the Sun-Dappled River Whilst Thinking About Someday Sending Our Twin Boys to Whittling Camp.”

No, I can't get a drink like that, but I sure as hell can get a “Catholic Pornstar” at Mulligan's.

And it's not just that the drinks are hurtling away from wholesomeness; they're also getting weirder. Look at Cary Street CafAc — it offers a Masturbating Butterfly.

Hmm.

Now I'm no lepidopterist, but I'm pretty sure that butterflies are not into self-abuse. And furthermore, if some yet-undiscovered species — say in Borneo — turns out to demonstrate auto-erotic behavior, why I'm sure that shot tastes nothing like it. I mean, what do Midori, Jagermeister and Sprite have to do at all with the sexual proclivities of any flying insect?

Not even the animal kingdom is safe from the perverted excesses of these shadowy mixologists. It's not enough just to have human-to-human Sex on the Beach anymore; now we have to have Sex with an Alligator. I would appreciate knowing how exactly “Sex with an Alligator” comes about — how the combination of raspberry liqueur and sweet-and-sour mix in any way evokes the experience of bestiality with a large aquatic reptile. I suppose I can just go on over to City Dogs to ask.

It's clear that absurdity is paramount in the naming, and that it's the risk of exposure, of social ostracism, that guides the nomenclature. But maybe it's that this is a way of moving us all forward together, forging a better, braver, more open-minded civilization there on the polished wooden frontier of that stretch of bar. The more we say out there, the less is left unsaid — fewer secrets, fewer hidden truths, a new way of being, illuminated by the rosy glow of the Fuzzy Pecker.

Maybe, then, the evolution of the mixed drink is really the evolution of our collected consciousness. Maybe this is why the young lady above is smiling that way — because she knows that she's forcing us to say what we fear, and in so doing, become fearless. The drinks of yesterday cannot prepare us for the changes of tomorrow. Which is why the rite of passage in the savage night of drinking includes gathering up the courage to ask (probably loudly, probably over the head of an adorable Persian medical student whose parents have a yacht) for a “Sweet” (ahem) “Tight” (ahem) “Pussy.”

Mix in a cocktail shaker, strain in a glass. Drink it and feel like you've committed some vague crime, impossible to pinpoint, which keeps you from sleeping for a few days, always looking through the blinds for the authorities to come for you.

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